Rugby Springs Into High Gear

Heineken Cup History Shows Quarterfinals Could Be Rough on Traveling Teams

By

Richard Gillis

April 4, 2013 11:20 p.m. ET

After a long winter, the return of a packed sports calendar is always the first sign of spring. Golfers have the Masters. Cricket's legion of supporters await the start of the county season. And for rugby fans, it means the business end of the Heineken Cup, when club rugby's European showpiece reaches the quarterfinal stage.

ENLARGE

Louis Deacon of Leicester Tigers jumps for a line out during Heineken Cup match in Leicester, England, in January.
Getty Images

With those games come a few certainties: large, colorful crowds; high-quality rugby to compare with anything out of the Southern Hemisphere; and, of course, victories for the home side. Probably.

Indeed, the last eight of the Heineken Cup offer one of the sports world's best confirmations of home-field advantage. Since the knockout rounds of the competition were introduced in 1997, the visiting side has won just 16 of the 64 matches.

Compare that number to the NBA, where the home team wins around 62% of games, baseball and the NHL (which are both around 53%) and the NFL, where home advantage accounts for between 54% and 64% of victories, and it still seems unusual.

So why rugby should favor the home side to such an extent is a mystery. Researchers have tried to explain it with crowd noise, travel fatigue, familiarity with surroundings, the size of the pitch and referee bias, but no one factor has proved fully conclusive.

"Other than the quality of the team, home advantage is the second-biggest factor in determining sporting outcomes," sports scientist Alan Neville recently told the BBC.

All of which would appear to be bad news for Munster, Montpelier, Ulster and Leicester Tigers, the traveling teams this weekend.

Of these four, Munster has the best record. It's one of just three teams to have won away from home more than once at this stage in the competition—Leinster of Ireland and Toulouse are the others.

On Sunday, Munster plays Harlequins at The Stoop, in Twickenham. It will be the Irish club's 14th appearance in the knockout stages, just shading Toulouse's 13 appearances. But perhaps the pick of the round sees Leicester Tigers visit Stade Mayol in the South of France, in the port city of Toulon, a working-class enclave situated between the film-star glitz of Cannes and the industrial might of Marseille. Rugby Club Toulonnais is seeking to reach the final four for the first time, the next chapter of a rags-to-riches story that reflects the rising financial aspirations of a new generation of club owners in France and England.

Toulon leads the French league with a team that was built on cartoon money. The ambition of club owner Mourad Boudjellal however, is anything but a joke. The son of an Algerian immigrant, Boudjellal grew up in the town and made his fortune by publishing science fiction and fantasy comic books.

Since 2006, that money has shifted from comics into rugby talent to the extent Toulon has been saddled with the nickname Galacticos—the same tag as Real Madrid, Paris Saint-Germain and the other most expensively-assembled European soccer clubs.

The names on the back of the team's red shirts tell the story. They include South Africa's World Cup-winner Bakkies Botha, Australians Rocky Elsom and Matt Giteau, and All Blacks star Carl Hayman, who combine with homegrown talent such as the maverick outside half Frederic Michalak and inside center Mathieu Bastareaud.

England's talismanic World Cup-winning fly half Jonny Wilkinson, has also recently extended his contract with the club for another year. Wilkinson, 33, is one of six English players in Toulon's squad, a fact that reflects the commercial realpolitik of international club rugby.

The rush to southern France is due in part to the salary cap in place in English club rugby which demands clubs maintain a pay ceiling of £4.5 million ($6.8 million) over the course of this season. In Wales, the other traditional rugby stronghold, the comparison is even starker. The Welsh clubs operate a salary cap of around £3.5 million ($5.3 million)per club.

The slate of quarterfinalists reflects these financial realities. There are no clubs from Wales or Scotland represented in the last eight, but three each from England and France and two from Ireland.

And the rich are set to get richer, because a Heineken Cup quarterfinal is one of the most lucrative single matches in the club game, according to the event's organizer, ERC.

The main factor is that the eight competing clubs have six weeks of lead time because of the break created by the Six Nations tournament. That allows them to aggressively market their inventory of hospitality packages and tickets.

In some cases, games are also shifted to bigger venues to accommodate demand for tickets. The Saracens vs. Ulster match, for instance, is expected to draw 30,000 fans to Twickenham, more than 20 miles (32 kilometers) from Saracens' normal home ground of Vicarage Road.

"Home clubs are incentivized by ERC to move to bigger venues as they will benefit from a 50-50 share of match revenues to an increased 65-35 share," an ERC spokesman said.

On average, the competing clubs shared €1 million ($1.28 million) net profit on ticket sales and hospitality per quarterfinal over the past two seasons.

"The selling cycle doesn't conflict with the clubs' week to week commercial activity, so the Six Nations creates a lag in that sense" says Derek McGrath, ERC's chief executive. "The space in the calendar between the quarter and semi is only a three-week gap. It's a game they haven't budgeted for, it's not included in the season tickets, so the check is a welcome addition."

However, this may not be enough for the English and French clubs, which are seeking change in the way the Heineken Cup is organized, and crucially, how the money is divided up. A greater share of the event's €50 million ($64 million) turnover and a controversial new domestic television deal may push the English salary cap higher and, some say, lead to an end to the exodus of talent from the English game.

It has led to a game of brinkmanship between organizers and the English and French clubs, with the clubs threatening a boycott. A European cup without the English and French clubs would effectively signal the end of the tournament.

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